Pizzas galore!

The row over the dossier came to a climax with a report by journalist Andrew Gilligan, broadcast on the Today programme and later repeated in the Mail on Sunday newspaper, in which Mr Campbell was accused of "sexing up" the dossier to make a stronger case for war against Saddam Hussain.

The weapons expert Dr David Kelly committed suicide after government press offices helped to identify him as the source of Gilligan's report.

As before, Mr Campbell categorically denied that he or Mr Blair were guilty of lying or of knowingly inserting information in the dossier that was false. He also defended the violence of his own reaction to the allegations.

"You shouldn't assume that this was a huge crusade by me," said Mr Campbell.

"This was an allegation that, if true, would have justified not only me being booted out of the door but Tony Blair being booted out of the door."

He said that Lord Hutton's report had exonerated him. "I was there to assist in presentation.

"There wasn't evidence to make the allegation that the PM lied, or that I falsified intelligence and inserted it into the dossier against the wishes of the Joint Intelligence Committee. It wasn't true then and it isn't true now."

Mr Campbell admitted though that his reactions had been strong. "I have got to accept that in the build up to that there was a clash of two cultures. I have got to accept that I was very aggressive and combative.

"I think that the media culture is very aggressive and combative, and people and organisations who don't stand up to it just get swept away." He added however that the crisis continued to haunt him every day.

Mr Campbell dismissed criticisms that he had left out the most interesting aspects of the story - most notably Mr Blair’s fraught relationship with his Chancellor, Mr Brown.

“There will be a lot of headlines out of it, there will be a lot of noise, there will be a bit of sound and fury, I hope for not too long, and I think then it will hopefully, as so many of these frenzies do, blow over,” he said.

“What I hope will be left is the first chapter of a record that I intend to put into the public domain about an amazing Prime Minister, a great leader in my view, who was responsible for taking Labour into power and taking Britain forward.”

Extracts from the memoirs are available online at www.alastaircampbelldiaries.co.uk. Mr Campbell was due to answer queries in a video question and answer session on his website from 10am this morning.

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